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There were a similar question in the otn forums today. Ok, when I have to run a script in production, the operators complain about errors like ORA-00942 table or view does not exist. Of course I can provide some documentation to explain what can be ignored, but then they then tend to ignore all ORA errors.

A script to create table t will drop table t if existant. There is no CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE command. So I will simply check the dictionary and drop only if existant.

dbms_lob.createtemporary(:x,true); caches the lob. If the lob is large (a large object is often large), it may use a lot of memory, use cache=false for slower performance but more economic memory consumption

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In part 1, I tried with pure SQL+XML, but empty columns were missing. In Part 2, I had a mix between PL/SQL and XML functions. Now I would like to publish the solution Vadim Tropashko posted in the OTN Forums. It is a NO XML pipelined function. I did a bit formatting in it. And I pipe clobs.

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I have been waiting for three years for the OCM 10g upgrade certification. Still waiting…
OCM DBA 10g Upgrade

Gavin just posted about the Oracle Expert Program

The beta phase has started for 1Z1-046 Managing Oracle on Linux for DBAs and 1Z1-048 Administering Real Application Clusters. Those exams will lead to Linux and RAC Certified Expert certifications.

Beta exam 1Z1-312 Oracle Application Server 10g: Administration II has not started yet. This exam will lead to Oracle Application Server OCP certification.

I have never taken a beta exam. They are quite long (3.5 hours), and you have to wait a few months to get your score. Since the OCM DBA 10g has not been released, I may well go for the RAC Expert exam if I have the time in June.